UK’s conservative press welcomes Theresa May’s Brexit ‘red line’

Theresa May is treading a delicate line on Brexit, but so far she’s playing it the right way, according to her powerful supporters in the conservative British press.

The prime minister’s message at her Cabinet away-day on Wednesday — “Brexit means Brexit,” no second referendum, curbs on immigration are not negotiable — was broadly welcomed by the editorial columns of the right-wing newspapers that played an outsize role in the June referendum.

“This paper draws huge encouragement from Theresa May’s Cabinet pep talk at Chequers, in which she insisted that regaining control of our borders must be a ‘red line’ in negotiations for Brexit,” the Daily Mail said in an editorial Thursday.

The prime minister struck “exactly the right not of optimism” in telling ministers that Britain would make a success of Brexit, and was right to insist that MPs wouldn’t be given a vote on whether to invoke Article 50, the newspaper, which campaigned aggressively for Britain to leave the European Union, said.

“At home and abroad, [May] is surrounded by plotters determined to ensure that Brexit means anything but Brexit… Mrs May must trust her own instincts.” As the Mail sees it, rejecting free movement of people will almost certainly mean Britain leaving the single market — and that’s a price the newspaper is willing to pay.

“Theresa May’s immigration red line is a great start,” the Sun said in an editorial, although it detected signs of “drift and timidity” in the government’s position on other Brexit terms.

The Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid, which also campaigned for Britain to leave the EU, wants a full Brexit, with Britain wholly out of the union determining its own laws and regulations and negotiating its own trade deals. “A Brexit much like the status quo, but with border controls, will betray the clearest mandate in our history,” the Sun said.

The Daily Telegraph, the influential conservative broadsheet which also backed Leave, agreed that May had “struck the right note” in the Cabinet meeting.

“The referendum is over. Britain is leaving the EU,” the Telegraph said in an editorial. “All Remainers, Conservatives included, must now accept that fact and play their part in seizing the opportunities of Brexit.”

However, the Sun’s stablemate, the Times, which backed Remain in the referendum campaign, urged May to consider a Norway-style arrangement whereby Britain leaves the EU but is part of the European Economic Area, with access to the single market.

“Hardliners may object that any arrangement allowing continued free movement of labour would be a betrayal of voters’ choice in the EU referendum. They would be wrong,” the Times said in an editorial Thursday. “The decision on June 23 was to leave the European Union, and EEA membership is a perfectly sensible way out.”

By taking that route, the Times said, Britain could be freed from the jurisdiction of the European court of justice and the common agricultural policy, have an emergency brake on immigration and the freedom to pursue trade deals — without undermining the British industries that depend on the single market.